What Does It Mean For Video Games to be Smart?

In recent weeks the argument was put forth that most games are dumb. Writing for the Atlantic, gamer and author Taylor Clark provided an in-depth profile on indie video game creator Jonathan Blow. In so many words, both Clark and

Feedback Loop: Many choices, or none, make a game.

Is just one choice all it takes to turn a novel into a video game? Before you say yes, consider when a game is created out of many choices and when we are left with none.

Richard Eisenbeis looks at Katawa Shoujo in an April 24 Kotaku article. Eisenbeis holds up the dating sim/visual novel as proof that one choice is all it takes to turn a novel into a game. It is a shallow analysis and the implication that one can stick a choice in a novel and have a game is just false.

If we step away from the screen with only Eisenbeis’s assertion, we lose out on understanding what developers have to do to take a story and turn it interactive.

Creating a good game means understanding the times when a million choices create an interactive work and the instances where no choices are required.

"Unlocks" and the gamification of gaming

  “LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD INSTANTLY!” I blinked. I had just launched Battlefield 3, and for some reason there a pop-up promising me…fairness? “Tired of fighting an uphill battle against Battlefield veterans?” it continued.  “The Ultimate Shortcut Bundle unlocks 119

10 Things I Want In The Elder Scrolls Online

Within hours of Game Informer’s announcement  that The Elder Scrolls Online would be the feature story for their upcoming June edition, scans of the entire article had been leaked, and with it came information that enraged some and excited others

Feedback Loop: Playing To Win

I must be one insufferable little prick. As I navigate the Inception-like hallways of Halo: Reach’s Reflection map, a grin spreads slyly across my face. I’m armed only with a DMR, a score of 49 to 49, and a genuine

Stifling the medium

The tall poppy syndrome is a pejorative commonly used in Australia to describe the social phenomenon in which people of genuine merit are criticized for being exactly that. It’s a ridiculous societal response that encourages people to censor their achievements

The Next Step: Towns is Everything Minecraft Isn't

The first time the spiders attacked, I wasn’t prepared.  A legion of black chittering death-bringers led by the red commander that loomed over the rest had decided that my small agricultural hamlet had had it too easy for too long.

Leaving Japan: What strategies should Nintendo adopt for the Wii U

There is trouble brewing for the Old Gods. On April 10th, Sony has released some very interesting numbers, announcing a ¥520 billion loss and an operating loss of ¥95 billion. It is the operating loss that matters, for it relates

A lot of videogames really are dumb, but not all of them have to be

Taylor Clark doesn’t think there are many intelligent videogames. Or, as he put it in his recent profile of Jonathan Blow, “Video games, with very few exceptions, are dumb.” Here we go again. Another “respected” media outlet taking shots at

The Paragon Homunculus in ME

Over the course of seven days I fell in and out of love, only to find it again in the arms of another.  I stopped a genocide, only to cause two others; I talked people off ledges, helped mend broken